Following my escape from the Nazi slave labor camp, and after encountering my brother-in-law, Bela Engel, on the streets of Budapest, he took me to one of the Swedish Safe Houses, established by Raoul Wallenberg, the legendary Swedish diplomat, who saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from deportation to Nazi extermination camps.

I stayed only for a few days at the Swedish Safe House. I joined the Zionist-led anti-Nazi underground. My assignment was to be an aid to Otto Komoly, the Chairman of the Hungarian Zionist Organization, and the head of its Aid and Rescue Committee. I have occasionally also served as an aid to Dr. Rezso Kasztner, the negotiator with SS Colonel Adolf Eichmann, who led the deportation of Hungarian Jews to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp.

Equipped with a fake ID, and other fake documents, wearing the cap of the Hungarian fascist youth organization, Levente, my mission was to deliver gold Napoleon coins, as bribes to high- ranking Hungarian Fascist officials, and fake IDs to Jews in hiding.

On such missions, I always carried a two-pound paper bag, filled with white flour. In it I have hidden Napoleons and fake papers. When asked about the bag, I would say, “I am delivering food from a Christian charity organization to needy people.”

It was a dangerous assignment, often facing armed gangs of Nyilas militia men, hunting Jews. They had a license to kill.

My life in Budapest, during the closing months of the war in Europe, was a series of close encounters with death.

Once, I left a private sanatorium, in Buda, on the left-bank of the Danube River, where my ID birthday date was being doctored, minutes before it was raided by a Nyilas armed gang, and all Jews sheltered there were massacred. Weeks later, the apartment where I rented a bed was hit by a Soviet aerial-bomb. The four Hungarian working men who shared the room with me, were killed. I arrived home, late from my factory job. That is what saved me.

After my hometown, Parkan, on the Danube River, was liberated by the Red Army, and once again was part of the reborn Czechoslovakia, I returned home. Only my father, and older brother, survived the Holocaust. My mother, sister, her baby, and more than a dozen close relatives, all perished in Nazi concentration camps

I moved to Prague, to resume my studies. Subsequently, I became a Prague-based foreign correspondent for Hungarian newspapers. After the 1948 Communist take-over of the country, I walked the corridors-of-power in the Communist world. I was getting familiar with how a dictatorship works.

The only bright spot was meeting Jaroslava, a beautiful Czech girl. We got married under Prague’s historic Orloj-Tower, in a 15-minute ceremony. But our marriage lasted 74 years.

As a foreign correspondent, I had a privileged life in Communist Czechoslovakia. However, the government excesses didn’t escape my attention. Soon, I was drawn into a circle of friends who opposed the regime. I was asked to use my foreign correspondent credentials to help people in danger of being arrested, escape to the West.

Eventually, I also became an endangered species and had to escape from Communist Czechoslovakia. We did, together, with my wife, Jaroslava.

We arrived in America on the old ocean-liner, Queen Mary, in 1958. The ship passed by the Statue of Liberty at sunrise. We asked to be awakened, not to miss seeing the statue. It has remained the symbol of our life in America, the rest of our lives.

I was hired as the foreign news editor of the largest Hungarian newspaper in the United States, the “Szbadsag,” which translates to Liberty, and soon became part of the American political landscape. My newspaper played an important role in the presidential election victory of John F. Kennedy. I have received a gold-plated inauguration medal from Piere Sallinger, President Kennedy’s Press Secretary.

A vacation in Lake Placid in the Adirondack Mountains, changed the trajectory of my life. We moved to Lake Placid, established a retail business there, and for decades, I served as a columnist at the Lake Placid News.

My writings on foreign affairs led to the founding of the Lake Placid Council on Foreign Policy, and the establishment of the Olympic People-for-People Program during the 1980 Winter Olympics, held in Lake Placid.

Once again, a vacation brought a change. A visit to Williamsburg, Va., turned into a 38-years dual residence. My wife and I had spent a half a year in Lake Placid, half a year in Williamsburg.

It didn’t take long for us to become an integral part of Williamsburg, and the College of William & Mary, and the community. My old friendship with Emery Reves, the author of the ground-breaking book, “the Anatomy of Peace,” led to the establishment and funding of the Reves Center for International Studies at the College of William & Mary.

During one of her visits to William & Mary, the late, Madeleine Albright, former United States Secretary of State, called the Reves Center’s program of undergraduate studies in foreign affairs, the best in the country

That this happened, is the capstone to my 99 years old life.

Shatz is a Williamsburg resident. He is the author of “Reports from a Distant Place,” the compilation of his selected columns. The book is available at the Bruton Parish Shop and Amazon.com